


Home Care

by CalmSpirited



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, No Entity AU, jakes sick and cranky, theres two cat memes this is based off of guess it and i lov u, wrote this for feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalmSpirited/pseuds/CalmSpirited
Summary: Jake comes home from shopping sick. Luckily, he had two helpers to put up with his crankiness.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Home Care

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this bc of discord shit. this is cute dont @ me

Living out in the woods for a handful of years gave Jake plenty of life experience to survive all types of situations, any type of scenario that you think would air on National Geographic, he could survive through it-

But the flu? Jake feels his vast survivalist skills shrivel and wither away with every sneeze and cough he makes into the crook of his elbow, skills that had taken years for . The loud sound of his car door shutting behind him rattles his brain and gives him an instant headache, and the first of the sniffles tickles his nose.

God fucking damnit, he hates Wal-mart. 

In a way, he's grateful that his home in the woods was destroyed by that mudslide last year; not only did it nearly kill him and land him in the hospital for a week with broken bones and wounded pride, but it ended up with him being temporarily accepted back into his family by his father long enough for him to be allowed to "recover" in their beach vacation house with a home care nurse named Kate Denson and a general caretaker named Claudette Morel.

Jake had been ready to crawl out onto the streets to prevent his already damaged pride being injured any further, but he was literally held down to his bed by his mother and brother as well as given enough painkillers by nurse Kate that he thought he was living it up in the Caribbean for the next week and a half, being tended to by a beautiful mermaid that he may or may not have tried to kiss at one point.

Which is what he thinks about doing now, minus kissing the imaginary mermaid, if it would let him get through whatever he was sick with with any lasting trauma.

As he climbs up the long stone steps to his temporary home, Jake's limbs get heavier and heavier with each step. Nearly losing his balance, he suddenly sneezes violently enough for his neck to pop. Wrapping the ends of the grocery bags around his fingers, Jake just barely makes it to the front porch before collapsing into the porch swing with a rattling sigh.

The swing rocks with his weight with a loud crackling sound that makes his ears protest and allows the cool breeze of the Atlantic Ocean blow against his warm face as he swings there in defeat, grocery bags sliding across the floor until he manages to detangle them from his fist.

The sound of the front door opening was enough for Jake to snap his eyes open, something he hadn't realized he had done, and the petite figure of Claudette Morel stepped out onto the front porch to greet him.

Jake snapped to in an instant, grabbing the grocery bags and trying to head inside swiftly before he was found out-

"Jake?" Claudette's soft voice ruined his plans. A small hand came up to pap his cheek. "Are you okay? You feel warm-"

"I'm fine-" Jake turns away for a moment because he feels a sneeze building within his nasal cavity, building and building and building painfully high but he never sneezed.

This is it, Jake thought, I cant sneeze anymore. I'm fucking done for-

"Jake?" Claudette asks again, and Jake turns back to see her face scrunched up with worry that Jake was quick to dismiss. "Do I need-"

"No, Claudette." He might've said a bit too harshly, so he tones it back several notches and speaks much softer. "You don't need to do anything because I'm fine-"

"Somebody's sick!" Kate called out from another room, and if he had had enough energy to do so, Jake would've lept down the stairs and thrown himself into the ocean. Alas, he just barely had enough strength in him to set the grocery bags down onto the kitchen counter and sit on one of the barstool seats.

Claudette got to work taking things out of the bags and ratting him out. "I think Jake is sick."

"No, I'm not." And Jake just barely managed to make that statement before he broke into a sickly coughing fit. Before he can draw in a proper breath when he's done, he hears the sound of Kate's trademark cowboy boots quickly clomping into the kitchen; too quick for Jake to get away from. Kate’s got the back of her hand pressed to his forehead before he can make a plan of escape.

“You, sir, have a fever.” She announces like Jesus himself had proclaimed it to be so, and then pressed her fingers lightly against the pulse point in his neck. “Your heart rate is elevated, too.”

Jake tried to shake away from her, but that would mean turning to Claudette and having her examine him, so he decided to stare straight ahead between them and not give in to their hypothesis. “I’m not sick, I’m-” A sneeze built in painfully again, and just for a fluttering moment, Jake felt the  _ euphoria  _ of a sneeze with his grasp, ready to alleviate the throbbing pressure underneath his eyes...but then it slowly faded away and left him sitting ramrod straight, eyes squinting, hand balled into a fist underneath his nose and teeth bared.

In short, he looked like a sick, desperate man who needed to be put down. Jake felt like it, too.

The next he opened his eyes, Kate was clomping off somewhere outside of the kitchen’s view and Claudette was covering her mouth with her hand in attempt to hide her amusement. Jake blinked at her, eyes watering from the pressure in his sinus cavity. A gwaffing sound came from the smaller Canadian woman, and she promptly turned away to put up the rest of the groceries. Jake stared at her back.

“It’s not funny.” His throat ticked, and Jake ended up coughing once to clear his throat, which set off a small, disgusting-sounding coughing fit that ended when Kate arrived back into the kitchen and shoved a jar of Vicks vapor rub under his nose. 

The smell was so strong and overpowering that it immediately sent Jake into another coughing fit. Kate, being the helpful nurse that she was, started to beat gently on his back ribcage while holding the barely used jar of Vicks under Jake’s nose. “That’s right, cough it out, sweetheart.” Jake continued to cough until his face turned red and he slammed his palm on the table as if it would help him.

Kate stopped beating Jake on the back and said “Inhale, Jake.”

By some miracle, Jake managed to quit coughing long enough to take a deep inhale of the salve inside the blue jar… and sneezed  _ violently.  _

His head snapped forward as it happened, and then he threw his head back and  _ shouted  _ in the pure relief when all the pressure under his eyes vanished and his head felt clear-

“Ew!” Claudette yelped in disgust. Jake’s eyes snapped open and realized that there was snot all over the counter and was hanging from his nose and chin. He reflexively opened his mouth in disgust which only allowed some snot to get on his tongue and immediately gagged, mucus welling up in the back of his throat. Claudette had just barely managed to hand him a paper towel before he spat it up everywhere.

“Young man, you are officially  _ sick.”  _ Kate declared, and Jake was too busy spitting up and wiping his nose and face into the paper towel to argue. Putting the lid back on the jar and setting it down on the counter, Kate grabbed Jake by the arm and helped him to his feet, despite him trying to sit back on the barstool. “Nice try. You’re gonna get a quick shower and then it’s off to bed for you.” It took Jake a moment too long while he was blowing his nose to realize that Kate was definitely leading him to the master bathroom. The mere idea of taking off his clothes with how hot he was compared to how cold the January air was had him shivering in his boots already.

“Kate-” He tried to say, but then he felt another sneeze build up and up… and stay at that painful plateau that made his cheeks throb and his eyes water. Jake felt the sudden urge to cry, but held back in favor of trying to stop Kate from pulling him into the bathroom by clinging weakly to the doorframe. “-I-” Kate started running the water in the bathtub after taking the paper towel from him and throwing it away in the small bathroom trashcan, carefully testing the waters with her wrist.

“Now, hush, darlin’, it’s not like I haven’t bathed you before.” As embarrassing as the memories are, she’s right: after many of his bones were broken, Kate (and sometimes Claudette) were the only two that bathed him for nearly two months. Those two saw more of him that he’d ever imagined showing to other people. But still; that was when he had more plaster on him than a wall, and now, coming close to nearly nine months after his near-death experience, he shouldn’t have to be bathed  _ again  _ like an invalid.

The water stops running and Jake hears the sound of the tub being plugged, and a shiver settles in the pit of his stomach. Kate turns around and Jake clings to the doorframe harder, eyes watering from the lack of sneezing. “Fuck off.” Jake mutters lowly, although both he and Kate knows that he doesn’t mean it.

“Jake.” Kate steps forward, and her hands instantly move to unzip his coat despite his protests, and manages to slip it off his arms despite Jake practically hugging the doorframe. “You gotta take a bath. It’ll make you feel so much better.”   
  


“You know what’ll make me feel better?” Jake asks sarcastically, goosebumps forming on his skin as Kate works to take his shirt off. “Dying. I could do with a nice, clean bullet to the head right now-”

“Oh, you’re such a drama queen, Jake! Arms up.” Having no other option but to comply, Jake raised his arms up and instantly folded them over his bare chest as it struck him how  _ cold  _ it was- well, to him at least. His teeth were already clattering together when Kate made a move for his pants, but that’s where Jake drew the line.

“I’m sick, not helpless.” He hadn’t realized at first that he had just admitted that he was indeed sick, but considering that he had just asked to be put down, the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. It was still as awkward as all get out to unbutton his pants and shed them along with his boxers in front of Kate- even though she’s seen him naked plenty of times. But it was the motivator to get him and and moving towards the tub, sinking down into the warm water with a pleased sigh as the water warms his freezing skin.

The moment he’s settled and comfortable enough in the tub, Jake lets his body relax and sags to the side, letting his head be cradled by the corner of the bathroom wall.

“There.” Jake hears Kate say, but his eyes and shut and basking in the warmth of the water. Kate already knows she’s going to play Hell getting Jake out of any warm environment. He was just like a cat in that regard. “You feelin’ better now, darlin?”

Jake slowly,  _ slowly _ , opened his eyes and turned his head to slightly face her, looking more out of the corner of his eye than actually facing her. “I’m cold.” Even though everything below his chest was in the water, his upper body was still painfully cold.

Kate giggles, and Jake takes that as a personal insult. “I’m cold.” He says again, this time with more force. 

More laughter, and Kate takes a washcloth out of the small closet in the bathroom and dips it in the bathtub and begins to wipe Jake’s face off. “Oh my God.” She says in between chuckling and swipes the cloth gently across Jake’s forehead first, but Jake for some reason jerked away from her and moved his head back. “Kate-” He says, but Kate shushed him.

“Kate-” He starts again, but Kate interrupts him. “You’re fine.” The cloth is dipped back into the water and she attempts to wipe it across Jake’s throat, but Jake leans towards her and puts a hand on the side of the tub and tries to weakly push himself out.

“No!” He cries out weakly, but he hasn’t eaten anything for at least six hours and he feels like shit, so he doesn’t really go anywhere except for back into the corner that he was just in. “It’s cold.” His eyes flicker to the washcloth in Kate’s hand, and Kate’s forehead scrunches up in confusion for a moment before she understands what Jake is saying: the washcloth isn’t warm enough yet.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” She apologizes, and puts the washcloth back underwater and holds it there until the warm water settles around her skin thens pulls it back out to wipe at the hollow of Jake’s throat. “Better?” She asks, and is pleased when Jake hums and doesn’t pull away from her this time.

Jake relaxes into Kate’s touch as the warm water slowly warms the rest of his body up to a nice and toasty level, and even though his nose is beginning to stop up and he’s becoming a mouth breather, Jake finds himself drifting off as Kate is bathing him and doesn’t even realise that his eyes are sliding shut until a hand on his shoulder has him looking at Kate.

“You ready to get out, Jake?”

Jake stares at her open-mouthed, like he’s shocked that she would ask such a question, knowing that she knows how he feels about getting into a warm bath: he never wants to get out of it. It’s like pulling teeth to coax him out of a warm bed during the winter months, even worse to get him out of warm water when the air is chilly.

“Not really.” He pouts, and sniffs. His eyebrows scrunched up at the noise of mucus collecting in his nostrils.  _ Gross.  _ The urge to sneeze suddenly comes over him again, and his face scrunches up even more, the pressure of the sneeze building up painfully until Jake squinted his eyes in a vain attempt to divert some of the pain in his cheeks.  _ You never realize how much you love to sneeze until you can’t anymore _ , Jake sags into the corner of the bath and lets his eyes fall shut, focusing on breathing in and out of his mouth with choking on the mucus draining down his throat…

“Jake?” Kate hummed, and Jake blearily opened his eyes. “What?” He said through his mouth with a sniffe.

“Are you sleepy?” She teased, a warm smile coming over her sun-kissed face, and Jake suddenly remembered why he hasn’t dismissed Kate or Claudette yet, despite his old wounds long since healed. He’s turned into a real big softie.

Despite being very tired and very questionably sleepy, Jake shook his head in defiance like a wet dog. “No. I can hardly breathe.”

“Jake.” Kate put a hand on her hips, drawing notice to her bra-less... _ assets.  _ “C'mon, let's get you out of the tub and into bed.”

Making a noise of discontent, the sick man tried once more to snuggle into his safe corner, but he was  _ physically  _ lifted to his feet with a surprised yelp and promptly wrapped in a heavy towel and escorted out of the tub onto the  _ cold tile  _ in the  _ cold air _ and it was  _ so fucking cold-! _

“Fuck!” Jake swore as Kate dried him off in record time, holding his arms over his chest so tightly his knuckles turned white and his fingertips ached from his grip. When Kate deemed him dry enough, she tossed the towel over his shoulders and wrapped him up in it as best as she could, and quickly guided him to his bedroom and threw the towel on the floor in favor of sitting Jake on the edge of his bed and wrapping him up in the many blankets he had covering the mattress.

Jake clung to his blankets like it was solid gold while Kate dashed to his closet to fetch him out some warm pajamas, rifling through his clothing until she pulls out the set of pajamas that Jake recognized as the set with all the cute crows on the shirt and pants that Claudette gave him this past Christmas.

He normally doesn’t wear pajamas like that, but he was  _ so cold  _ that he was visibly trembling and desperate for any additional warmth. “Arms up.” Kate commands, and Jake pries his hands off his arms to stick his arms up in the air so Kate can quickly slide the shirt on him, and does the same for his legs with a little awkward jiggling afterwards.

The  _ moment  _ Jake considered himself to be fully dressed, he drove underneath the covers, grabbed the duvet and groan at the slight vertigo the motioned caused and tucked himself in up to his chin. “Thank you.” He muttered to Kate, turning to lay on his side facing towards her. “Can you get me, like, five Tynelol?”

Kate giggles, and runs a hand through Jake’s slightly damp and wild hair, always impressed with how soft his hair was despite knowing that Jake was a fan of hairbrushes. “Later. Right now, you just need to take a nap and you’ll wake up feeling so much better.”

Jake grumbled. “I’m not that sleepy.” He was lying like a bitch: he could pass out at any moment, and a sneeze was building under his right eye yet again, and this time Jake could feel his eye become heavy and swollen.

Shaking her head with a sigh, Kate’s golden locks ticked her cheeks as she paused in the stroking of Jake’s hair. She opened his mouth to say something, but…

Kate giggled softly. Jake looked up at her, one eye open wide and the other one over halfway shut,and Kate started to full-on laugh at the look on Jake’s face.

“What?” Jake asked, perturbed that Kate was clearly laughing  _ at  _ him. He didn’t look  _ that  _ horrible yet, did he? “ _ What _ ?” He asked again, picking his head up off the pillow to look at Kate more directly.

“Nothing, it’s- your eye.” Kate inhaled deeply to stop the giggles from escaping her throat, but then Jake rolled his eyes and she couldn’t help herself to the next round of chortling. “Your eye is half shut. You look so cute! Can I take a picture of you?” 

Jake paled. “Absolutely not.”

“Please?” Kate pleaded, reaching for the phone in the front pocket of her Levi jeans. “Just one picture?”

“No.” Jake rolled over, away from Kate and her phone with evil intentions and closed his eyes. “I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight.”

“Oh, now you’re sleepy?”

“I’m going to cough on you if you don’t leave.” Jake threatened, and  _ thankfully  _ he felt Kate get up off the bed and walk over to his side of the bed and  _ press a kiss to the top of his forehead.  _ Was he, like, eight or something? 

“Sure you will.” Kate ruffled Jake’s hair one last time before making her way out of his bedroom door, with a soft “Sleep well, darlin’.” before bringing the bedroom door to a near shut and walking back down the hallway to Claudette, who was reading Botanist Weekly on a kitchen barstool.

“He’s such a hard ass.” Kate compliments, pausing at the fridge to grab a bottle of tea and plop up on the barstool next to Claudette’s. “Until he’s sick.”

“Then he becomes a baby.” With her French Canadian accent, Claudette smiled and flipped to the next page of her magazine. “His mother was right about him, down to a T.”

“Most mothers are right about those sort of things. Remember how  _ adamant  _ he was at first about getting better and dismissing us?”

“And we are still here.” Claudette is trying and failing to hide a wide grin behind glossy pages. “Wonder if he’ll ever get rid of us.” The dark-skinned woman mutters to herself, glancing over her magazine and giving Kate a knowing stare.

“I wonder what he’ll do without us.” Kate quipped back, and the girls broke out into chuckles.

“I wonder if his mother will  _ let  _ him get rid of us.” Kate nearly choked on her tea, and gave Claudette a soft high-five. 

_ Plus,  _ Kate thinks to herself,  _ I have too many cute photos of Jake that I can embarrass him with for him to ever dismiss us.  _

  
  



End file.
